My WordPress blog turned 12 this week (that is this blog). WordPress said it was yesterday but I actually think it was the 17th. I’d been blogging before at Typepad, Blogpost and Jisc Involve (which was my project) but despite cheating on her with Medium the last few years on and off this has been my domain for more than a decade.

My first post was this one https://digitalbydefault.com/2008/02/17/hello-world/ about my trip to Miami for the Carsonified Future of Web Apps conference. That was my first international conference. It was my first international Twitter adventure. I almost met Laura there but when we missed each other it pushed us to meet up in the UK and we’ve been friends and occasional colleagues ever since. Funnily enough I am returning to Miami for the first time since this later this year.

Later that year I wrote this post https://digitalbydefault.com/2008/06/23/beanbag-for-bristol/ and within days had a new job with a start-up in Bristol and had one of the most interesting years of my career and made (and lost) some great friends (RIP Pete).

This post moaning about my new Nexus 7 https://digitalbydefault.com/2012/07/21/nexus7-nightmare/ remains the most visited piece I have ever written. The initial release of the Google tablet was buggy as hell and so when I got mine on day one and it was dead I was one of the first to complain – which lead to me being linked to from The Guardian and getting a lot of traffic for several days. Glad I wasn’t hosting my own site.

In 2010 I wrote my first #weeknotes https://digitalbydefault.com/2010/02/19/jisc-weeknote-133/ and we know how that turned out https://weeknot.es

At the end of 2010 I added the custom domain digitalbydefault.com to the site (inspired by Martha Lane Fox’s report https://digitalbydefault.com/2010/11/24/what-does-the-revolution-mean-for-me/) and have owned it ever since (despite an attempt of a publishing/events company to claim it!).

In 2015 this is where I properly started #jukesiejobs https://digitalbydefault.com/2015/07/05/mvping-with-jukesiejobs/ and it is still going strong. Moving from a sporadic series of Tweets and blogposts to a weekly newsletter with 1300 subscribers.

Between 2015 and 2019 I mainly blogged on Medium – either at weeknot.es or productforthepeople.xyz but quietly cross-posted back here for my archive. I love the UX of Medium (and honestly it feels like WP has gone backwards) but I never trusted them as a company.

So here I am back – new theme and old approach to writing. I wonder if I can keep speaking to myself for another 12 years 🙂